


A Four Letter Word, Beginning With L

by MakingStarsShine



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 00:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10292915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakingStarsShine/pseuds/MakingStarsShine
Summary: So this was a request from @scarletdreamer01 who requested: “ “It’s okay. I’m used to it.” and “I didn’t like you anyway.”? The story involves the reader liking cisco but he likes gypsy. Caitlin knows about the reader’s feelings and maybe cisco overhears it? It is up to you how you want to end it. I would prefer sad but if you want happy i’m okay with it.” Here ya go, I hope you like it! I tried to stick with the sad ending, so I hope it’s sad enough.





	

“Y/N...” Caitlin gave you that knowing look, the one she gave everyone when she could see right through them, but was trying to be kind.

 

 

“I’m fine Cait,” you assured her blandly, your eyes focusing on anything but her face. You weren’t fine, how could you be fine? You’d just watched the man you were in love with swooning over some woman he barely knew, you’d just watched that same woman kiss him into a limited vocabulary, and just like the last time she showed up, you watched her disappear again, leaving Cisco pining after her while you tried your best not to be sick on the floor.

 

 

Caitlin sighed, taking a tentative step closer to you, “He’s not doing this on purpose,” she tried to explain, “Cisco doesn’t know how you feel...if you could just tell him, I’m sure he’d -”

 

 

“Sure he’d what Caitlin?” you cut her off, your eyes finally meeting hers, the redness and tears in them now to obvious to hide anyway. You smiled thinly, “Cisco has a type, we know this, and that type isn’t me ok? He wants someone who can hand him his own ass with a smile, and I’m not like that...I don’t enjoy hurting people, I barely enjoy being on this team anymore with all the crap thats happened...he wants a bad ass, not the meta girl next door...”

 

 

Caitlin sighed again, her arms crossing over her chest as she struggled to find something more to say. “Y/N...I know that everything thats happened with the team has been hard, believe me, and I know what its like to feel hopeless, I mean clearly,” she looked down at the floor, a soft bitter laugh escaping her before she continued. “the important thing though, is that we are all family here, and whether you believe Cisco wouldn’t like you back or not is your own opinion, but you’ll never know unless you tell him how you feel. It could be painful, it could not, but at the very least you wouldn’t be holding those feelings in and letting them eat away at you like you are now,” she took the final two steps to your side, her arms uncrossing so that she could put a hand on your shoulder, “I just don’t want to watch your torturing yourself anymore...and I know thats a sort of selfish reason, but Y/N...you deserve better than this.”

 

 

You sat in silence for a moment after she’d said her peace, feeling her hand resting on your shoulder, listening to the clock on the wall ticking away softly. You deserved better? Didn’t you all? Things had gotten so fucked up, so twisted and angry and dark, and yet Caitlin thought you deserved better? She was slowly turning into an ice hearted bitch, bent on killing everyone she ever loved, and yet you deserved better? Iris’ life was still in danger of being ended, all in the name of revenge from some lunatic speedster god from the future, and yet you deserved better? Cisco’s brother had been taken from him in an instant, a loss Cisco still hadn’t gotten over no matter how hard he tried to convince everyone he had, and yet YOU deserved better? All you had was a case of unrequited love, a pain that sometimes swallowed you whole when you were alone at night, but was generally just a dull ache you could cope with...what better did you deserve? This was the real world, people had crushes that went unnoticed all the time, that didn’t mean they were owed anything, that just meant they had to buck up and move on.

 

 

You drew in a slow deep breath, wiping your eyes as you turned back to Caitlin, “I’ll think about it, ok Cait?” you promised her vaguely, managing a half hearted smile up at her from your seat in a rolling chair. Caitlin smiled back, nodding though you could see in her eyes she knew you were lying to her. She opened her mouth to say something more when Cisco’s voice sounded from behind you both.

 

 

“I have been standing here way too long,” Cisco announced with a guilty grimace, Caitlin turning to regard him with wide eyes while you froze in place, your chest feeling as though a vice were suddenly crushing it.

 

 

“Cisco!” Caitlin gasped, her hand still on your shoulder squeezing suddenly, “What are you doing sneaking around like that! Don’t you know how rude that is-”

 

 

“I was not sneaking Cait!” Cisco defended quickly, “I left my goggles up here and I need to work on them, I didn’t realize I was gonna walk into-” he waved his arms towards you both, his expression panicked and upset at his own blunder. “Believe me, I would love to pretend this didn’t happen and just walk away right now,” he assured her, “but I’m pretty sure that would be a major dick move on my part, so I announced my presence before things got any deeper.”

 

 

Caitlin grit her teeth, preparing to scold him some more, but you placed your hand over hers on your shoulder. “How much did you hear?” you asked, the crushing feeling in your chest making it difficult for you to force your voice to not shake, but you managed it.

 

 

“Well, I uh...” Cisco hesitated, scratching the back of his head as he tried to calm his own nerves, “I heard the...the part about you liking me…and how you said you’re not my type...and then, uh-”

 

 

“So all of it then,” you interrupted with a slow nod. Caitlin’s hand on your shoulder squeezed again, but you gently removed it, giving her another wry smile as you said, “well at least he know no.” You’d meant it to be a joke, something to make her feel less guilty for not noticing him either, but the bitterness in your tone was too strong, and when you saw the tears sparkling in her eyes you immediately felt guilty yourself. “Give us a minute?” you asked her softly, to which she nodded and quickly left the room. You took one last deep breath in, steeling yourself against what was about to happen as you looked Cisco in the face, “I’d smile and say something funny, but I think we both know it would be fake so lets get on with it.”

 

 

Cisco gave you an awful look, his eyes filled with so much sadness and guilt you almost considered trying to convince him this was all some elaborate joke, but this needed to happen. He glanced down at the floor, his gauntlet clad hands wringing nervously before he looked back up at you and asked, “how long?”

 

 

“Since you died,” you answered him, “the night we helped you re-live that conversation with Thawne, I realized I didn’t want to live a life without you in it,” you shrugged for lack of anything better to do, your heart thudding in your chest as he continued to gaze at you so despairingly.

 

 

Cisco swallowed and nodded, “Ok...sounds like a reasonable time to realize you have a crush on someone,” he mumbled, looking down again. You smirked as you watched him, thinking it was so like him to be more nervous about this than you, after all he was a giver, he gave so much to everyone on the team that this was probably foreign territory to him...he had probably never rejected anyone in his life. “S-so this uh...this crush thing that you….um,” he floundered, his brow furrowing as he forced himself to look at you again. “This crush that you have o-on me...why didn’t you mention it before?”

 

 

You shrugged again. “I tried,” you admit honestly, “I was going to tell you the night that Dante died, but obviously I didn’t get the chance,” you felt a flash of guilt at the way Cisco flinched at the sound of his brother’s name, but you pressed on, “then you were grieving, so I didn’t want to tell you about my feelings because you weren’t in the right head space to process something like that. And then Barry told us about Flashpoint, and I started to wonder if my feelings were because of what he’d done or not, but then he confirmed that they weren’t and by that time HR was here, and Gypsy showed up to take him back and well….the rest is history.”

 

 

“History?” Cisco repeated softly, “you keep this to yourself for that long, and thats it? It’s just history?”

 

 

You shook your head, “What do you want me to call it Cisco?” you asked incredulously, “I didn’t speak up, I kept my feelings to myself, and now you’ve got someone. I don’t expect you to just drop Gypsy like a hot potato because now you know how I feel, that wouldn’t be fair! And if I’m completely honest, even if you did choose me over her, I wouldn’t want to be with you unless I knew you were choosing me because it was me and not out of guilt. So yes, it’s history Cisco, it has passed and I can’t change it.” The tears were back in your eyes now, but these were tears of anger now, the frustration of it all welling up and bursting out of you as Cisco stared at you in morose confusion.

 

 

Silence passed between you both. You continued to cry but you refused to look away from him, and he continued to watch you, his instincts to hug and comfort you warring with his instincts telling him not to touch you at all lest he hurt you more with the wrong kind of affection. Eventually, you wiped your eyes again and stood up, grabbing his Vibe goggles from the table beside you where he’d accidentally left them, “You should consider attaching these to a neck band or something so you don’t keep leaving them places,” you said gruffly as you handed the to him, and moved to pass him.

 

 

“Y/N,” he said as he caught you by the arm, his sad eyes boring into yours as you looked back at him numbly, “I’m sorry ok? I know that doesn’t make it better, but I really am...I don’t know what would have happened if you had told me before, and I really wish I could tell you for a fact I would have liked you back, but its like you said, I don’t want to say it unless I’m sure it’s not the guilt talking.” He took the goggles from you slowly, pushing them up over his forehead into his hair as he continued, “as it stands right now, I can tell you that I do love you, you’re part of the team, you’re my friend, and I consider you family like everyone else...and thats why I’m so very sorry to be hurting you like this, because I don’t...I never wanted to-”

 

 

“Cisco,” you stopped him, removing his hand from your arm to hold it in both your own. He was shaking poor thing, his hand and body trembling under your touch. You were hurt, you were angry, and sad, and all the things he thought you were, you couldn’t deny that; but he was hurt too, you could see it in his eyes, the pain glaring at you like a neon sign, all because he felt responsible for you pain. But he wasn’t, not entirely, so you couldn’t let him shoulder that pain alone...that’s not what a friend would do.

 

 

“I know you don’t want to hurt me,” you assured him quietly, “its not in your nature to hurt others willingly, but we both know this can’t work now, so there’s no use agonizing over it anymore.”

 

 

Cisco’s brow furrowed further, his eyes narrowed to a squint as he asked, “But you’re still….you still feel the same way, and I’m….I can’t...we can’t...” he took a breath before forcing out, “You’re still gonna see Gypsy and I together, and that’s gonna hurt, isn’t it?”

 

 

You shrugged once again, nodding as you replied, “Well...yes. But it’s ok, I’m used to it.”

 

 

He let out a shuddering gasp that sounded almost like a sob, “Y/N I don’t want you to be used to it, I want you to not feel it anymore,” his voice was soft and cracked, but you put on your best smile and shook your head.

 

 

“It’s alright Cisco really,” you assured him some more, “after all, I didn’t like you anyway.”

 

 

His face contorted in confusion for a moment before he realized what you were doing. Tears welled in his eyes as he clenched his jaw for a moment, then he nodded and said, “Right…yeah no, that would be awkward, since we’re practically family and all.”

 

 

You nodded, grateful he was playing along so easily, desperate to end this conversation and to go home where you could cry until you felt better. “Right,” you agreed, finally letting go of his hand.

 

 

You got three steps down the hall behind him before he called to you. “Y/N?” he didn’t turn to you, likely because he was trying to hide his tears as he asked, “s-see you tomorrow?”

 

 

You didn’t turn either, you only nodded and called back, “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

 

 

You made it all the way to your car before the tears came crashing out of you like stormy sea waves, shaking your body and soaking your face and sleeves as you tried to wipe them way so you could see. You knew that living in the lie you’d just agreed to maintain with Cisco wasn’t the healthy way to go about this, and it would probably end up crumbling anyway and you’d both be left in the shattered remains of it wondering how to proceed next. But it would work for now at least, and it might even give you both time to heal a little before broaching the subject again. Every muscle in your body clenched tight as you sobbed violently in your drivers seat, letting everything out in the hope that you’d end up numb enough, and tired enough to sleep tonight.

 

 

The ‘lie’ you came up with to save you and Cisco both from pain in that moment had actually been partially true. You didn’t like him, or like him like him as most people would say...the day he relived his ‘death’ at the hands of Thawne, you hadn’t realized you liked him at all...that day, you realized you loved him, and that was what hurt most of all.


End file.
